In case you missed it, last week's chat included some technical difficulties. We promised to follow up with questions that Novick couldn't answer at the time. The questions below were asked directly by readers last week. Novick's responses were sent via email:

Is the city looking at a studded tire fee? Why not?

Because of the damage they cause Portland roads, I agree that restrictions on studded tires should be imposed. That is why the City Council asked the Legislature to ban studded tires in the last legislative session. The legislature did not. But we’ll try again.

This is referred to as a street fee. How is this not a tax?

Taxes are generally used to raise general revenue and fees pay for a specific service based on the use/benefit. Since our revenue mechanism is structured to create revenue for a specific purpose, the safety and maintenance of our streets, it is more a fee than a tax. A second factor used to distinguish a fee and tax is whether or not the fee is based on your level of use of the resource: Fees have a strong connection to use/benefit and taxes generally do not. Since our fee is based on the estimated number of trips generated by property types and square footage as described in the industry accepted best source of calculating average trips by property type, the funding proposal is more a tax than a fee.

Where is the proof that the city needs additional revenue to repair the streets? Where is a complete analysis, showing the details of how much money comes in and the total expenditures?

The condition of all the $8 billion worth of assets that PBOT manages—everything from streets to bridges to sidewalks and crosswalks—is carefully monitored. In fact, the most recent Asset Status and Condition report was released just the other week and it confirms what many of us see on a daily basis: key elements of our transportation system are falling into disrepair without the dollars needed to keep them in good working order. This report gives us the knowledge and tools to direct the dollars we have where they can have the biggest impact. The report may be found here: https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/62871. In addition to this report, the City recently pulled together a Transportation Funding Task Force of external financial experts that also confirmed that the City needs additional resources to meet our maintenance and safety needs.

Why does the city need to repeatedly repair some of the same streets?

Maintenance needs are ongoing. It’s part of responsible asset management. The better we do at maintaining our assets, the less we have to spend in the long run. The analogy I frequently use is brushing your teeth. We know, and dentists remind us, that regularly brushing our teeth is a pretty cheap and easy way to prevent costly and painful things like fillings and root canals. Investing in transportation maintenance is the sort of back to basics approach that I am committed to, and one that will save taxpayers.

How does PBOT prioritize spending to insure maximum return on taxpayer dollar? Cars & trucks represent the majority of trips within the City of Portland, but there has been a 30+ year disinvestment in roads.

PBOT uses a pavement management system to ensure that we make the right paving investments at the appropriate time to maximize the life of the street and reduce current and future costs. Annually, PBOT develops an agency budget that attempts to maintain, operate and improve our transportation system. This budget is developed with the assistance of PBOT’s Budget Advisory Committee. Portland, like most cities in Oregon, without sufficient funding for our streets is not able to provide the identified maintenance and safety services.

The Institute for Transportation Engineers Trip General Manual estimates that multi-family properties generate about 60% of the trips generated by a single family house. As a result of multi-family properties on average generating fewer trips, they pay a lower fee.

How will freight customers be assessed for using our streets?

A street fee assessment on business would be based, in part, on the number of trips generated. As to fees by weight of vehicles, that is something we certainly looked into. We found that there isn’t really a dramatic difference between the wear and tear an SUV imposes versus a sedan—and much of the wear and tear just comes from weather. “Water is the enemy of pavement,” experts tell me. Even if we all rode nothing but bicycles on our streets, there would be weather-related wear and tear.

However, freight trucks are a different story; they impose lots of wear and tear. Because of that, the State has a freight weight-mile tax. Eugene considered a local one some years back, but concluded it was just administratively impractical to track how many miles a truck drives within the city limits of Eugene. In Portland, City staff have concluded that not only we would have similar administrative problems, cities are also legally preempted from applying a local weight-mile tax because of the existing State assessment.

Instead of asking for money to pave the streets could you pave the streets first with the money currently dedicated to non-essential projects?

PBOT has very little resources being allocated to non-essential services. When this same question was asked of our Transportation Funding Advisory Committee and our Bureau Advisory Committee, they both concluded that it is not possible for the City to solve the maintenance funding problem by reallocating existing resources.

Why are we not looking to better manage the funds being spent currently before seeking more money? For example, a busted street near my home was completely repaved only to have the city come back weeks later to hack it up to make scheduled sewer improvements, which necessitated repaving again. This happens all over the city regularly. Why isn't there better management and better scheduling on these sorts of projects to reduce waste before asking for more money?

There are several reasons why you might see a street being dug into and repaired. In addition to maintenance, repairs, and improvements that PBOT does on our transportation assets, the Water Bureau, BES, utility companies, and private contractors also cut into streets to access underground assets. Any work on our streets done by private companies or bureaus other than PBOT are responsible refilling cuts into the street. The City does our best to coordinate all of this work and we’re currently looking into software that could streamline this coordination.

What if two families are living in one house? Which one has to pay?

A street fee would be assessed per household, which includes both single family and multi-family dwellings. The street fee would be addressed to the resident or user of the property. If two families live in one house they will need to work out how they split the cost of this fee in the same way they share other costs.